exhibition in 1960, his interest was mainly triggered by
the art scene in Düsseldorf, which I knew nothing about at
the time. Yves Klein was one of the leading exponents of the
trend, and because he lived in Paris and Iris Clert1 helped
to spread his ideas, he had a huge advantage. In those
When and where did you first meet the ZERO artists?
days, Germany had a thing about Paris. Germans saw
Oddly enough, I met the three most important figures in
Paris as ten times bigger and better than anywhere else.
the ZERO movement around the same time. Not all of them As far as I was concerned, Yves Klein’s Anthropométries2
together, but each one individually. That can’t have been a bore no relation to our ideas. I rejected them from the
coincidence. I had been familiar with Fontana’s work since start. As “happenings”, I found them interesting, but the
1956, but I didn’t meet him face to face until 1957 in Milan; resulting pictures never satisfied me. They are merely the
I also met Yves Klein and Manzoni in 1957. Manzoni
demonstration or documentation of an idea.
brought his Achrome (Achromes) to my exhibition at the
Galleria Pater in Milan in February 1958. After they died,
What significant exhibitions were there in those early days?
they were the three who were widely identified as the most I think the most important exhibition of those years was
important members of the ZERO movement. That was how “Monochrome Malerei” (Monochrome Painting) at the
it began. It was really fantastic!
Museum Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen, rather than
“Anti-Peinture” (Anti-Painting) at the Hessenhuis in Antwerp,
What drew you to your friends? Tell us about your
where just about anyone was allowed to hang something
relationship with them.
on the wall. The exhibition was too broadly conceived
We communicated very well with each other. That was
and totally indiscriminate. “Vision in Motion — Motion in
because we had the same artistic concerns. We were a
Vision” at the Hessenhuis in 1959 was important for me
clique of artists. When I met Fontana for the first time,
because it was there that I met Günther Uecker. Uecker
we both felt there was an instant and spontaneous conand I immediately felt that affinity that is so vital to friendnection. Fontana was like a father or an older brother to
ships between artists.
me. I learned so much from him. But you could also turn
the whole thing around and ask what Fontana learned
Which exhibition was the most important for you at the
from me. For example, once he had seen my canvases,
be­ginning of your career as an artist? Which was the most
he would only buy his own canvases in Flanders. He also
beautiful exhibition of that era?
borrowed some of my painting techniques. It was all
My most important solo exhibition was in 1958 at the
about give and take. You simply can’t separate one from
Galleria Pater in Milan; the most beautiful was “Flämische
the other. You can’t really ask what Manzoni borrowed
Landsschaften“ (Flemish Landscapes) in Mullem3 in 1967.
from me and what I borrowed from him. It wasn’t just by
Mind you, I paint landscapes as a hobby, in the same
chance that the two of us immediately clicked. We were
way as other people go fishing. I also paint portraits in my
pursuing the same ideas, and we discussed a lot of them
spare time. This has nothing to do with my work and
by letter. We were both surprised to discover that people
my painting.
on the other side of Europe were working on those same
ideas and that there were parallels between their artistic
What were the artistic problems that you and the other
results and ours. That was around 1957 or ’58, but things
ZERO artists had to tackle at that time?
didn’t get serious until 1960. When Udo Kultermann
We grappled with the problem of how to go beyond Tachism
showed such commitment to the new movement in art with and Art Informel. What mattered more to us was to create
his “Monochrome Malerei” (Monochrome Painting)
consciousness-raising painting. We had turned away from
5

From Vermeer, I have learned a lot about colours and
colour in space, and, of course — I’ll say it again — from
Jan van Eyck. All these masterpieces are so far removed
from us, as if they were hung behind a wall of glass. Today,
it’s impossible to paint like Van Eyck. Vermeer, Van Eyck
and I perceive nature in a similar way. Our depiction of the
natural world has nothing to do with the natural landscape,
but with the eternal rhythm of nature.

1 Parisian gallery owner
whose eponymous gallery became a centre for avant-garde
art from the mid-1950s to the
early 70s. She was particularly
supportive of Yves Klein’s work.
2 Anthropometry is the study
of human body measurement
for use in anthropological
classification and comparison.
Klein used the term to describe
performance paintings, where
he covered nude women with
paint and used their bodies as
paintbrushes.

Where does the future of painting lie?
Are you asking whether painting still has a future? I don’t
believe in a future for panel paintings. That’s because
nowadays people no longer learn how to paint. They
turn to every possible kind of technique — screen printing,
photography and so on. It’s hard to turn away from all
that and go back to painting. Can you imagine an artist
like Warhol without photography or graphic techniques?
The American Hyper-Realists would be unthinkable without
photography, even though they have gone back to painting, no doubt as a reaction against the predominance
of the graphic arts. Anyone can learn the techniques of
painting, provided they are willing. But it is often that very
willingness that is lacking. At art school, I was given indepth training as a painter and that is what drives me, not
how much money my paintings can fetch.

3 A small town in the province
of East Flanders, Belgium.
4 In Grenchen, Switzerland.
5 Pseudonym of the Dutch artist
Herman Dirk van Dodeweerd.
6 Painted in few colours.

In an interview commissioned by Anna and Gerhard Lenz, owners
of the Lenz Schönberg Collection, and conducted by Reinhard
Bentmann, Susanne Müller-Hanpft and Hannah Weitemeier-Steckel
at Schönberg on 2 February 1973. Revised and updated by Dirk
Pörschmann from a previously unpublished manuscript in the Lenz
Schönberg archive.

Beyond the Boundaries of Colour in the Realm of
Boundless Being
1 For more about the special
spelling of “flamand” with the
letter “t”, see interview with
Dominique Stroobant, p. 233.
2 Cf. articles by Tiziana
Caianiello, Johan Pas, Francesca
Pola and Beate Kempfert and
interviews in this book.
3 Quoted in an unpublished
letter from Jef Verheyen to
Eberhard Fiebig, Antwerp,
14 December 1970, seen in
the Eberhard Fiebig Archive,
Kassel.
4 See interview with Jef
Verheyen, p. 10.
5 In conversation with the
author in May 2010 Léonore
Verheyen told how every family
trip to Paris always meant a
visit to the Musée Marmottan
to study and marvel at Les
Nymphéas. Verheyen also travelled several times with his wife
Dani Francq to Monet’s garden
at Giverny. For more about
Verheyen’s series of paintings
Hommage à Monet (Homage
to Monet) see interview with
Jef Verheyen, p. 9.
6 In conversation with the
author in June 2010, Léonore
Verheyen related how she and
her father made a number of
excursions to well-known places
where Cézanne used to set up
his easel. This was while Verheyen was visiting his daughter,
who studied at the University
of Provence in Aix-en-Provence
from 1976 to 1978.

Dirk Pörschmann

PROLOGUE
Jef Verheyen was a painter. His tool was the paintbrush, his material paint,
his medium light, his inspiration the visible, and his chief precision instruments
his eyes and mind. Verheyen painted in order to see, and he saw because he
felt with his eyes. With his paintings, he arouses and sensitises the perception
of the serene spectator, in whom he evokes a sensual openness and a feeling of connection with the surrounding environment. Verheyen painted an
essential distillation of his vision, a perfume of the visible, and his paintings
offer their viewers possibilities of seeing something new, remembering things
forgotten, and experiencing things they have never experienced before.
Jef Verheyen was held in high regard among his friends. At a young age,
“Le Peintre Flamant”1 came into close contact with artists, intellectuals and
collectors in Belgium, Italy and Germany.2 His friendships and his painting
were his elixir. In 1970 he wrote: “I think friendship is the eternal summer.”3
Among friends, he not only found acceptance as an artist and a man, but
also the energy, friction and heated debate so indispensable to creativity.
He sought close contact with his fellow artists and often visited Lucio Fontana
and Piero Manzoni in Milan, Hermann Goepfert in Frankfurt, Günther
Uecker in Düsseldorf and Christian Megert in Berne.
Verheyen also sought out artists of earlier times and artistic movements.
He liked to drop in at art galleries to admire the Old Masters, Jan van Eyck,
Vermeer or Botticelli,4 to commune with Claude Monet through his Water
Lilies, otherwise known as Nymphéas5 and to visit Paul Cézanne through his
letters and conversations and explore places around Aix-en-Provence, where
Cézanne made his incomparable paintings of the Montagne Sainte Victoire.6
The relationships between Verheyen’s friends and their late companion are
67

“[…] there is a fundamental narcissism for all vision.
And thus, for the same reason, the vision he [the
seer] exercises, he also undergoes from the things,
such that, as many painters have said, I feel myself
looked at by the things, my activity is equally passivity […], so that the seer and the visible reciprocate
one another and we no longer know which sees and
which is seen.“
Merleau-Ponty, L’œil et l’esprit (Eye and Mind), 1961, p. 256

“And it’s awful for me, my eyes stay riveted to the
tree trunk, to a clod of earth. It’s painful for me to
tear them away when something has a hold on me.”
Conversations with Cézanne, Gasquet, “What He Told Me …”,
1912/1913, p. 117

Surfaces — Space — Depth — Totality
“So it is logical that I no longer take any notice of surfaces, that I feel I am a focal point in space: alone against
space, alone against nothingness.”
Verheyen, untitled, 1958

“My painted spaces are the unspoilt beaches and fields of
a new world of colour.”
Verheyen, Etwas über Maler und Malen (Something About
Painters and Painting), undated

“Nature is not on the surface, it is in depth; colours
are the expression of this surface and thus depth.
They reveal the origins of the world.”
Conversations with Cézanne, Gasquet, “What He Told Me …”,
1912/1913, p. 124

“I can’t claim that I always achieved what I thought of as
one-dimensionality, In fact, that’s the way it should be.
My paintings shouldn’t be read spatially, but perceived
as a whole.”
Verheyen, interview, 1973, p 7

74

“I would be at great pains to say where is the painting I am looking at. For I do not look at it as I would
look at a thing; I do not fix it in its place. My gaze
wanders in it as in the halos of Being. It is more
accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it,
than that I see it.”
Merleau-Ponty, L’œil et l’esprit (Eye and Mind), 1961, p. 296

“It’s a difficult idea to grasp„ but that is my aesthetic problem — a painting without beginning or end.”
Verheyen, interview, 1973, p. 7

World — Sensibility — Silence
“The painter ‘takes his body with him’, says Valéry.
Indeed, we cannot imagine how a mind can paint.
It is by lending his body that the artist changes the
world into works of art”.
Merleau-Ponty, L’œil et l’esprit (Eye and Mind), 1961, p. 294

“An artist is only a receptacle for sensations, a
brain, a recording device. Damn it, a good machine,
but fragile and complex, especially where others
are concerned.”
Conversations with Cézanne, Gasquet, “What He Told Me …”,
1912/1913, p. 111

“To abandon objectivity, to adopt a colour as your own
— in other words to become a colour — is a powerful
reminder of how it feels to be in a state of trance. After a
while, you are enveloped by colour; then the whole thing
goes into reverse, exterior space becomes interior space,
and you can no longer distinguish the single dimensions.
Everything becomes transparent and, in the silence that
surrounds, you are ready to receive.”
Verheyen, Farbsehen / Farbsinn (Seeing Colour, Sensing Colour), 1968

Jef Verheyen placed his life’s work within the context of a generation of artists
who, in the 1950s and 60s, were searching for new ways of artistic expression beyond Art Informel and Abstract Expressionism. Among the artists
with whom he felt a strong connection, he numbered Lucio Fontana, Yves
Klein and Piero Manzoni. In a 1973 interview, he said:
We grappled with the problem of how to go beyond Tachism and Art Informel.
What mattered more to us was to create consciousness-raising painting. We had
turned against Abstract Expressionism. The four of us — Fontana, Yves Klein,
Manzoni and I — responded to it with a collective idea. […] We communicated
very well with each other. That was because we had the same artistic concerns […]
We were pursuing the same ideas.

1 Interview with Reinhard
Bentmann, Susanne MüllerHanpft and Hannah SteckelWeitemeier, February 1973:
transcript in the archive of the
Lenz Schoenberg Collection.
Revised and updated interview
in this book, p. 4-12.
2 Ibid.

Verheyen also found kindred spirits elsewhere: “We were surprised to discover that people on the other side of Europe were working on those same
ideas, and that there were parallels between their artistic results and ours.”1
At the other end of Europe was Düsseldorf, where Group ZERO had formed
in 1958. Verheyen became close friends with Günther Uecker, of whom he
said: “Uecker and I immediately felt that affinity that is so vital to friendships
between artists.”2
Nevertheless there was an important difference, both artistic and personal,
between Verheyen and his companions. Verheyen saw himself as a painter
in the traditional sense. Unlike Uecker or Manzoni, who experimented with
the widest possible array of materials and objects, Verheyen produced his
works by applying paint to a classic support. “What others achieve with new
techniques and materials, I simply paint,” he said during the same interview.
Although the content of his paintings was non-representational, as a Flemish
painter he placed himself in the figurative tradition of Netherlandish art.
81

In the history of art, I am particularly impressed by Jan van Eyck’s paintings.
I understand them immediately and my response is quite spontaneous […]. From
Vermeer, I have learnt a lot about colour and colour in space, […]Vermeer, Van
Eyck and I perceive nature in a similar way. Our depiction of the natural world has
nothing to do with the natural landscape, but with an eternal rhythm .3

Here, it is obvious that Verheyen recognised the connection between the
tradition of representational painting and his own non-representational art.
They shared the characteristic on which his entire aesthetic programme was
based — colour. He regarded the depiction of nature in painted colours not
as a representational reproduction of reality, but as an artist’s interpretation
of the “eternal”, transcendental connection of being, made visible in colour.
In his published writings and numerous unpublished annotations, letters and
interviews, Verheyen dealt extensively with colour theory, the relationship
between colour and space and the effects of light and colour materials.
He was not concerned with developing a colourful, individual style or establishing a set of personal principles. What he was seeking was a universally
valid law of effect. In his manifesto, Pour une peinture non plastique (A Plea
for Non-pictorial Painting), he argued that colour recognition was an “exact
science”. According to Verheyen, most painters “complain about the INACCESSIBILITY of colour”, but, he claims, only their own lack of interest in
colour was to blame:
They are all trying to develop a personal way of using colour as a means of
expression. However, not one of them has even begun to discover the exact value
of a colour. They use colour without realising that they must also understand the
connectivity that exists between colours. Instead of investigating colour per se, they
attune their skills to the materials they have readily to hand.4

Even so, he continues, in practice it depends on “giving a colour its highest
level of effectiveness” which, in turn, requires a precise definition of the tangible and intangible characteristics of the colour in question: “It is possible
to define a colour, insofar as we can recognise it as a connection between
tangible matter and absolute, namely intangible, transparency.”5
Here, it is not possible even to begin to present the rudiments of Verheyen’s
physical and metaphysical approach to colour. Even a quarter of a century
after his death, his theoretical deliberations and their relationship with tra82

ditional colour theory and contemporary art manifestos remain completely
unexplored. Instead, this essay will attempt to provide a preliminary insight
into Verheyen’s painting techniques and how he developed them. Any attempt to achieve a deeper understanding of his theories must begin with the
question of how Verheyen used colour. There has so far been no research
into the techniques and materials used in his painting, which can only be
hinted at in this essay. To compound matters further, even when closely
examined by experts in the technical aspects of art, Verheyen’s paintings
do not always reveal the secret of his technique. Nevertheless, his endeavours to produce painted works of art that transcended their own materiality
formed a significant part of his aesthetic agenda. He was constantly in
search of ways to transcend materiality using material means.
Verheyen employed a sophisticated technique in which he built up paint
in translucent layers, or glazes, to produce subtle gradations of colour. In
adopting this method, Verheyen placed himself in the old-masterly tradition
of Jan van Eyck, who perfected this same use of glazes in the fifteenth century.
While the early Netherlandish artist used the glazing technique to create
the illusion of depth and reproduce the reality of things in the painting with
mimetic precision, Verheyen only represented the colours themselves, but his
use of glazes disguised their materiality. The colours became visible by making invisible the fact that they consisted of tangible material, thereby allowing
their intangible “essence”, to have its effect on the viewer.6 The extreme
smoothness of the painting surface also contributed to this dematerialisation.
To apply paint, Verheyen used a wide bristle brush or, according to Nic
van Bruggen, “shredded nylon stockings”.7 He even avoided using brushstrokes and only when the painting was lit from the side was it possible to
detect that the paint had been applied “mechanically”, namely with a brush
or other implement. He avoided any brushstrokes, since the brushstrokes
were only visible under a spotlight. The even application of colour created
a dematerialising effect. Not a trace remained of the working process. The
artist stayed in the background to create space for the colours to take effect.
At the same time, Verheyen’s choice of support for his painting showed his
desire to downplay the material he used. At first, in the 1950s, he painted
on chipboard and jute fabric for financial reasons.8 Later, he moved over to
fine linen. He spread the canvas with primer and then applied the paint in
83

was one of the founders of Symbolism and Apollinaire collaborated with
the Cubists. Some avant-garde movements actually owe their formation to
the power of the word: Futurism is a literary concept coined by the poet
Marinetti, while Dadaism is a creation of Tzara, and Breton was the pope of
Surrealism till the day he died. In Belgium, Antwerp literati Paul Van Ostaijen
(1896 – 1928) and Michel Seuphor (pseudonym of Fernand Berckelaers
1901 – 99), introduced international Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism and
Constructivism to a young guard of visual artists between 1918 and 1928.
This “classic” avant-garde model, and the catalytic role of literary figures
such as Van Ostaijen and Seuphor, was undoubtedly what poet and critic
Paul De Vree had in mind when he sought a rapprochement with visual art
in the late 1950s. In his programmatic text, De avant-garde. Plastisch: poetisch
(The Avant-garde. Visual: poetic) of 1962, De Vree explicitly addresses this
trans-media aspect of “parallelism” and makes specific connections with
the paths established by the early twentieth century avant-garde poets.
The author deals extensively with the parallels and collaborations between
poets and painters: Paul Van Ostaijen and Oskar Jespers, Jean Cocteau
and Pablo Picasso, Blaise Cendrars and Sonia Delaunay, Michel Seuphor
and Piet Mondrian, Hugo Claus and Karel Appel are all considered. Extending this avant-garde line to the contemporary neo-avant-garde of around
1960, De Vree describes how Jef Verheyen introduced “the avant-garde”
to Antwerp together with author Ivo Michiels, initially with artistic input from
Milan (from Lucio Fontana and others), and afterwards with “the offensive
in favour of distinctly Flemish Essentialist painting”. But, De Vree writes, “the
paths of the visual artists also cross those of the younger writers here. Shows
and vernissages are the work of literary kindred spirits”.5 De Vree is referring
here partly to his own role, as well as the fact that a reaction to Subjectivism
and Existentialism was already under way in the progressive literary circles
of the late 1950s, which were seeking an affiliation with visual modes of expression. In his essay, De Vree makes frequent reference to Verheyen, whom
he describes as “the barometer of his generation”, and to his influence on
contemporary poets.
Language played a major role for Jef Verheyen. He read and wrote a
great deal, and used text to organise, position and communicate his complex
visual ideas. The catalogue from his first retrospective exhibition in 1979
117

De Tafelronde and G 58: the poet and the painter
Born in 1909 (the year of Marinetti’s famous Futurist manifesto), Paul De
Vree hailed from an older generation than Verheyen. At the time the two
met, De Vree had a rich career behind him as a literary critic, poet and publisher. Through his role in journals such as Vormen (Forms) (1936 – 40) and,
above all, De Tafelronde (1953 – 81), this versatile and active author had
become a figurehead (albeit a controversial one) in Flemish modern circles.
Around the time that De Vree sought an affiliation with the visual avantgarde of the late 1950s, his own Modernist poetics, which he had been
using since the 1930s, were evolving towards a more explicitly textual and
visual experiment. The period of his collaboration with Jef Verheyen saw
this development accelerate. De Vree published the experimental poetry
collections Egelrond (Hedgehog-ring) (1957), Grondbeeldig (Fundamental
Imaging) (1960), Pl.acid.amore (1963) and H.eros.hima (1965). With the
“mechanical poems” in the Explositieven (Explositives) collection (1966),
created by constantly turning the sheet of paper round in the typewriter, he
took the definitive step towards concrete poetry, which ultimately evolved
into visual poetry with Zimprovisaties (Zimprovisations) (1968) and Poëzien
(Poevision) (1971). During that period, De Vree not only sought contact with
historical avant-garde “pioneers” from the interwar period (he was in touch
with Raoul Haussman, for example), but also with international neo-avantgarde figures such as Henri Chopin. They set him on the track of sound
poetry, among other areas.
The development of the journal De Tafelronde, in which De Vree was
involved from start (1953) to finish (1981), runs astonishingly parallel to his
own poetic development. While a fusion of tradition and experimentation
still prevailed in the first three years, experimental poetry was the dominant
theme from year four onwards (1957). In that period, De Vree took over
the role of editorial secretary from Ivo Michiels and largely determined the
journal’s editorial policy. For example, a greater affiliation with the visual
arts was sought. As shown above, from 1950 onwards Verheyen had formed
part of the complex pattern of Antwerp literary journals in which De Vree
also played an active role. Verheyen became involved in De Tafelronde
through Ivo Michiels, whom he met in 1955, and his first contact with De Vree
probably dates from 1958. In the summer of that year, the editorial teams
120

Paul De Vree, De Nieuwe Vlaamse School.
Achter- en voorgronden, De Tafelronde
16/1, 1971, cover with reproduction of the
Manifesto

NIEUWE VLAAMSE SCHOOL recognises in itself THIS Flemish tradition, that the
universal characteristic of modernity is contained in its own nature, i.e. the Flemish nature; … is dedicated to the conviction that authentic painting has never been
formal or fashion-driven by nature, but of course only contained the essence, as a
result of which it has the ability not to confuse the essence with the passing message of the earlier masters …

13 De Vree Paul, op. cit., p. 18
14 De Vree Freddy, op. cit.,
p. 19

The rest of the somewhat muddled text, drafted by Jef Verheyen and Paul
De Vree, is dominated by an anti-Belgian discourse and criticism of the fads
of contemporary art. (In an initial, unpublished version in Jef Verheyen’s
archives the anti-Belgian theme is less prevalent, while the art system and its
norms and fashions are more sharply lambasted). The bilingual pamphlet
bears the names of artists Mark Claus, Herman Denkens, Jan Dries, Vic Gentils,
Jef Kersting, Nico Klerks, Guy Mees, Guy Vandenbranden, Englebert Van
Anderlecht, Wim Van de Velde and Jef Verheyen himself. These artists were
also taking part in the exhibition, which was introduced by painter Nic van
Bruggen. Under the signatures was a separate, unsigned text by Verheyen
headed with a rhetorical question: “Does universality lie in tradition?” With
the text and the exhibition, the group around Verheyen and Van Anderlecht
clearly severed its ties with G 58, which opened a group exhibition in the
Hessenhuis that same evening, and formulated “a declaration of war against
the currently prevailing policy in the area of the visual arts”.13
The Verheyen-De Vree duo’s provocative initiative raised many questions.
Freddy De Vree rightly points to the Flemish nationalist rhetoric and its inconsistency with the internationalism of the ZERO artists admired by Verheyen
and De Vree. However, this strange and, to many people, paradoxical mix
of Modernism and nationalism is not only seen in Verheyen and De Vree. It
goes back to the activism of Paul Van Ostaijen, for whom sympathy for the
Flemish movement and internationalism were not mutually exclusive. In any
case, the point of the show eluded most observers. Pamphlet and exhibition
consequently met with sharp criticism.14 Paul Vaucaire, for example, wrote in
Le Matin daily newspaper (3 November 1960): “… immatérielle, sur la crête
du néant, la peinture de Jef Verheyen est la moins flamande qui soit” (“…
dematerialised, verging on nothingness, Jef Verheyen’s painting is the least
Flemish possible”). Ben Klein stated quite plainly in Het Kahier (November
1960) that Verheyen had weakened his position by breaking away and had
125

Letter from Paul De Vree to Jef Verheyen
about Fontana’s project for the exhibition
“Integratie”, 14.7.1964. Verheyen Archive

132

Fella), provided filming and editing, composer Jan Bruyndonckx created the
“concrete” musical score and Paul De Vree supplied the script, which was
recorded by actor Julien Schoenaerts in five languages. Contrary to what
viewers might have expected (and apparently actually did expect), Essentieel
is not an abstract film, but consists of sequences of images of nature selected
by Verheyen to which light and colour in various forms are central (monochrome, pointillist, vibrating etc.). The twenty-minute, 16-mm film premièred
at Poesie und Film. Manifestation der Antwerpener Essentialisten (Poetry
and Film. A Show by the Antwerp Essentialists), an exhibition staged by
Galerie d in Frankfurt (5 April 1964) where, according to one review,
it sparked off an “immediate debate”. The daily newspaper Frankfurter
Rundschau’s reviewer mustered little appreciation of the outmoded essentialism of the Antwerp group, but was more positive about the film, which he
termed “a manifesto of Essentialism in film”.31 Verheyen elaborated on his
intentions in a newspaper interview:
Donner une forme dynamique à ce qui, en peinture, ne peut être traduit que de
façon statique, ou presque. Fixer sur pellicule un phénomène irrationnel: celui de
la métamorphose des couleurs en lumière. Montrer, par conséquent, leur matérialisation en valeurs spatiales quoique impondérables. (To give a dynamic form to
something that, in painting, could only be translated in static or almost static form.
To fix an irrational phenomenon on film: the metamorphosis of colours and light. To
show, consequently, their materialisation in spatial, though imponderable, values.)

According to Verheyen, De Vree’s script “adhered” as closely as possible
to the spirit of the work. The film then had a few more showings in Belgium
and the Netherlands. Shortly afterwards, arguments arose over the financial
management of the entire project. The film has now vanished without a trace.
Essentieel can be regarded as an experiment in the integration of the
arts: the view of one painter resulted in a synthesis of film images, music
and poetry. In the same year, however, Verheyen and De Vree developed
a more explicit integration concept: the “Integratie 64” (Integration 64)
exhibition. Visual art and architecture were to enter into dialogue there and
thus offer a conceptual framework for a modern and artistic understanding
of the urban environment. On that occasion, Renaat Braem (1910 – 2001)
joined the Verheyen-De Vree team. This socially committed, leftist inspired,
133

32 De Vree to Verheyen
14.9.1964, Liefooghe, op. cit.
p. 18

functionalist architect was of the same generation as De Vree; he had
worked with Le Corbusier and strove for a radical form of social housing.
The “synthesis of the arts” forms an ideological leitmotif in his work. The
previous year, Braem had designed a pavilion for the “Integratie van de
Kunsten” (Integration of the Arts) for the seventh Middelheim Biennial,
incorporating a monumental photo montage with seventy panels related to
this theme. In 1964, Braem completed the reconstruction of the nineteenthcentury fort in Deurne on the outskirts of Antwerp as the Arena sports and
cultural centre. “Integratie 64” acted as an inaugural exhibition, and had
to direct the attention of press and public to the ambitious project. Verheyen
and De Vree invited visual artists and architects who favoured the notion
of the integration (or is it interaction?) of the arts. The majority of these
belonged to Verheyen’s international ZERO scene: Günther Uecker, Yves
Klein, Lucio Fontana, Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, Victor Vasarely, Hermann
Goepfert, Oskar Holweck, Wolfgang Döring and the architects Renaat
Braem, Werner Ruhnau, Sebastian Paquet, Christian Megert, Hans Jochen
Kirchberg, Nanda Vigo, Oskar and Zofia Hansen, and Urs Graf all
accepted the invitation.
Mack, Megert, Goepfert, Uecker and Vasarely provided works that had
to be realised on site. To this end, they collaborated with local companies
and suppliers. Fontana sent a design for a monumental, perforated iron
sculpture with internal lighting, De tijd en de ruimte (Time and Space),
which was produced to plan. Three monochrome colour tables by the recently deceased Yves Klein were realised with the permission of his widow.
Verheyen’s father-in-law made a scale model according to Klein’s plans
and the firm Acrylform carried them out. Verheyen thus played an important
organisational role here, too, as emerges from a published letter by
De Vree about the transportation of the pieces.32 The organisers had evidently
learned from previous experience, because Verheyen is not mentioned
anywhere as a co-organiser, although he is listed as an “ordinary” participant.
He realised a project with Braem and showed documentation about his wall
painting in the Volksschule (secondary school) in Frankfurt designed by
Sebastian Paquet. The first issue of Plan, the architecture and art monthly,
appeared as a publication for the show with a layout by Braem and a cover
designed by Vasarely. Paul De Vree took care of the editing of the quadri134

Bodies of light and dialectics of the immaterial
Spazialismo, Essentialisme, Achrome
Francesca Pola

Art is such a mysterious thing,
and all our lives we pursue this mystery
and are only too pleased not to discover it,
because otherwise it would be the end of art.
It is the mystery of human intelligence.
Lucio Fontana to Jef Verheyen, 19611

This essay will focus on a decisive moment for the birth of a new European
artistic vision: the late 1950s and early 1960s which witnessed a general
abandonment of the expressive space of the subject associated with the
post-war Art Informel movement and the advent of a new and free relationship with global space and with the vastness of an expanding universe.
I intend to reconstruct and document a series of episodes, relationships
and influences that linked the personality, thinking and work of Jef Verheyen
with the Italian art scene — a scene which at that time, thanks to the seminal
figures of Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni, played a key role in the germination and direction of this new artistic identity. I shall concentrate on this
decisive moment, when a formal “return to ZERO” and expressive reduction
were seen as offering a constructive way of reformulating visual language,
once the historical and cultural disappointments that followed the Second
World War had been shed. The result was the development of a positive
vision: not a sterile eradication of the past, but the focusing of new issues
more closely attuned to the changed human dimension, as humans began
physically to explore the cosmos.
An examination of this network of exchanges and associations will give
us a clearer grasp of the origins of Verheyen’s mature artistic style, and set
it against a backdrop of relationships that would have an indelible influence
141

idealistic, compared, for example, with the modern phenomenological approach espoused by Fontana, who sought to make a concept present by
crossing the physicality of a complex, dynamic relationship with reality and
its expansive possibilities. Similarly, the creative solution which Manzoni,
deliberately using similar terminology, was shortly to define as achrome was
not the pure experience of chromatic reductionism postulated by Verheyen,
but a way of appropriating the world concretely in a neutralising vein, to
save it from transience and decay and translate it into a totalising vision.
Achrome: a vision of concreteness
After these initial contacts in Milan, Verheyen tried to get the Italians to exhibit
in Antwerp together with artists from other countries, with Manzoni acting as
intermediary. On 30 January 1959, he wrote to Verheyen with the address
of Yves Klein, c/o Werner Ruhnau in Gelsenkirchen, and suggested he ask
Klein for the addresses of the “two other German monochrome painters”
(most likely Heinz Mack and Otto Piene of Dusseldorf). Manzoni also put
Verheyen in touch with Agostino Bonalumi and Castellani, whose creative
ideas he shared during this period. In a letter written some time in March
1959, he added:
I will also speak with other interesting young artists keen on exhibiting: so if you
can get a fair number of good painters, you will be able to make your own selection for the exhibition. I, too, am interested in this exhibition: it is a pity that here
in Milan we’re going through a bit of a crisis, so I can’t afford to come to Antwerp:
but as soon as I’ve got some cash, I’ll come straight away. I am also interested in
Michiels’ books: you know, I’ve already got all the proofs ready and I would really
like him to write an introduction.

Manzoni himself turned down the opportunity of holding a solo exhibition
in Antwerp because he could not undertake the journey, given his many
commitments in Italy and the work required in preparing the Azimuth review, the first issue of which was published in September 1959.
In his Essentialisme manifesto, Verheyen used the term “achrome”, which
may be translated as “colourless”, and which, during the spring of 1959,
was adopted by Manzoni for the titles of his current works, thereby
summarising a radical concept and signalling its international currency,
148

concept to the Placentarium, a spherical or oval “pneumatic theatre” developed in August 1960 for the stage set of Piene’s Lichtballet (Ballet of Light):
a real volume which translates the virtual volume of the absolute body, into
an imploded situation (the artist himself speaks of the viewer being immersed in a “foetal” position).17
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1960, Verheyen exhibited with Fontana and
Manzoni in the ground-breaking Monochrome Malerei exhibition at the
Städtisches Museum in Leverkusen, which took monochrome painting as its
theme in bringing together many European experiments connected with the
new idea of expressive essentiality.18 The exhibition was curated by Udo
Kultermann, whose catalogue article (entitled “Monochrome Malerei: Eine
Neue Konzeption”) was reworked by the author and published again, a few
months later, in the second issue of the Milan-based review Azimuth, under
the title “Una nuova concezione di pittura”. Kultermann writes that:
The new painting seeks to objectivise the instruments of action, to the point where
the constellation and true nature of formative matter itself become its starting point
and means of implementation, and the real objective structure takes the place of
the vague trace of personalised forms of expression. […] The aim is not to produce
art, but to transform reality.

Versions of the articles published by Manzoni and Castellani in this second
and final issue of Azimuth were also published earlier in the Leverkusen catalogue, as if to emphasise the close affinities in the ideological development of
the new vision. The fact that Azimuth was published in four languages is emblematic of the “transnational front” brought into being by the seminal influence of Manzoni and his more active European partners, such as Verheyen.
In his article “Libera dimensione”, Manzoni writes:
17 Letter from Manzoni to
Piene, Albisola [August], 1960:
“Many variations are possible
in this theatre, in the structure,
etc. (provided that the foetal
position of the spectator is
ensured)”.
18 Leverkusen, Städtisches
Museum, Schloss Morsbroich,
18 March – 8 May 1960.

The issue for me is to render an integrally white (or rather integrally colourless,
neutral) surface, independent of any pictorial phenomenon, any intervention extraneous to the surface value: a white which is not a polar landscape, an evocative
or beautiful material, a sensation, a symbol or anything of the kind; rather, a white
surface which is a white surface, nothing more (a colourless surface which is a colourless surface) or, even better, which just is, which just exists (and total existence is
pure possibility).

Here, it is the acquisition of the world’s dynamism in the absolute of the
white body that confirms its essence. This is paralleled by the vision of
Castellani, who, in Continuità e nuovo, speaks of a “concreteness of infinity”
which can emerge only from a physical relationship with the iteration of the
generative element of the image as a tangible entity. In both operational
and theoretical terms, these are somewhat eccentric positions to put forward
in a European context, where the point of reference was still the pictorial
dimension: a dimension which Verheyen himself was to resolve in a different
and more evocative direction, in a sort of chromatic pantheism which receives spatial and light-related stimuli in a quite different way, leading to an
explosion of flows of light and cathedrals of light, which, in their very titles,
bespeak his particular vocation and frame of reference.
Excavating space
The Leverkusen exhibition also confirmed Fontana’s pioneering role in the
new European school, while he himself, in a way typical of the man, was
again developing in an unexpected direction. On 5 October 1960, he
wrote to Verheyen from Milan:
I worked hard at Albisola this summer, making nearly thirty very large terracotta
balls with large incisions and holes in them. I’m very pleased. This is nothingness!
The death of matter, the pure philosophy of life.19

The new cycle he was referring to was that of his nature, shown for the first
time in the “Dalla natura all’arte” exhibition at the Centro Internazionale
delle Arti e del Costume, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, in the summer of 1960.
For Fontana, the nature represented a new way of excavating space, superseding the synthetic colour of his inchiostri, then his tagli. They were his way
of sinking back magmatically into matter and thus maintaining the dialectic,
so typical of his approach, between close-up penetration and cosmic expansiveness, turning every creative action into a new irradiating and polysemic
centre. This emerges from another letter to Verheyen, written a few months
later, with reference to the nature:
19 In Campiglio, op. cit., pp.
179-180.

perceptive dynamic, to her subsequent Volumi a moduli sfasati (volumes
made up of out-of-phase parts), in which she used a hole punch to make
rhythmic sequences of holes in layers of rhodoid (a transparent plastic material), superimposing them to generate interferences. Despite the obvious
differences, it is these latter works, in their investigation of transparency and
their dematerialisation of the surface image, that exhibit a parallelism of
ideas with Verheyen’s creative experimentation of that period, though his
focus on a direct relationship between light and colour excludes any rhythmic/temporal dimension from the immaterial.
Reflection on transparency was also central to Manzoni’s investigations in
the early 1960s. In a letter he wrote to Verheyen from Albisola on 1 August
1961, he says that he has begun “to think of the text on the immaterial”, as
well as producing some “new works, even hairier than the previous ones I
showed you in Milan: made using fibres 15-20 centimetres long” and “two
new linee (lines): one 1000 metres in length, the other 1140”. The first of
these developments indicates an increased use of synthetic materials and
the second, a persistent conceptualising intention in making the drawn line
disappear into sealed containers, larger in size than the first linee created in
1959. Also from the early 1960s dates the first draft of the book Piero
Manzoni: The Life and the Works, planned as a publication consisting of
nothing but transparent pages, and advertised by the Petersen Press in 1962,
shortly before Manzoni’s untimely death in February 1963. In the autumn
of the same year, Fontana, Verheyen and Hermann Goepfert completed a
joint work interpreting the same dimension of immaterial totality, in this case
by including a further component: sound.28
Transparency as a rhythmic dematerialising element appears again in
the project for an environmental sculpture conceived by Fontana and built
under Verheyen’s supervision for the “Integratie 64” exhibition, held in
Deurne (Antwerp) in October 1964. This is how Fontana presented the plan
to his friend in a letter from Milan, dated 15 June 1964:
28 The work was based on
Goepfert’s idea of the Optophonium, in which lights pulsate
in time with an electronic sound
impulse, producing a synthesis
of light and sound.

I am enclosing photographs of a sculpture project for the “Integratie 64” exhibition. If the project interests you, I can make a larger maquette in sheet metal and
you can reproduce it on an even larger scale, 4 metres or more, 5 or 6 metres, in
stainless steel. The sculpture has holes and reliefs and must be lit from inside

Fontana had theorised about the possibility of a fusion of space and time as
far back as 1946, in the spatial formulations of his 1946 Manifiesto Blanco. In
the hour-glass structure of this work (an image of time running through space),
he extended the idea by projecting light in the form of a pulsating body. This
was in keeping with the idea of experiencing total immersion in light which
Fontana had already explored in his pioneering — indeed “immaterial” — experimental images for television in 1952, and had translated into extraordinarily multiplied and expansive lines in the exceptional installation comprising
seven levels of neon lights created for “Italia 61” in Turin in 1961.30
In this essay, intentionally combining theoretical analysis and historical
reconstruction, I have sought to provide new material and food for thought,
which I hope will lead to further research. Such research might be comparative, reconstructing the relationships between the artists referred to here and
their mutual influences, or it might lead to deeper understanding of their
individual careers by examining their parallel positions.
The personal and poetic freedom that characterised Verheyen’s relations
with his Italian colleagues, particularly Fontana and Manzoni, may in a way
be seen as representative of that of a whole generation of European artists.
Intense experience of real, ongoing transnational dialogue was possible for
the first time, quickly establishing a pattern of varied stimuli. From this point
of view, we might perhaps recognise in the work of Verheyen an ideal synthesis of the great Flemish tradition of brilliant but cold light effects and the
intensely corporeal light and warmth of the Italian Renaissance which, in the
late 1950s, was preparing to take possession of the real space of the world,
moving towards the luminous — and mysterious — space of a now boundless
cosmos, beyond the history of human imagery: “Art is eternal, but it cannot
be immortal,” the First Manifesto of Spatialism declared, explaining that, “it
doesn’t matter to us if a gesture, once accomplished, lives for a second or a
millennium, for we are convinced that, having accomplished it, it is eternal.”31

In 1970, Verheyen contributed to two group exhibitions. The Museum
Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen put its recent acquisitions on show, with
Jef Verheyen represented in the monochrome painting section. Klaus Honnef
launched the “Umwelt-Akzente” (Accent on the Environment) exhibition in
Monschau. Verheyen took part with others including Jan Dibbets, Alf Lechner,
Adolf Luther, Ulrich Rückriem and Stefan Wewerka.
For Verheyen, Germany became ever-more appealing. “Here, everything is as usual, peaceful and beautiful. What’s happening in Germany? …
France is a bit cut off and the people aren’t really European.”33 His trips to
Milan became less and less frequent — “Milan is nothing now Fontana isn’t
there any more. I’ve been here two days but the excitement has gone”34
— until he finally gave up visiting the northern Italian city: “The Roberto
Grippa business is stupid. As far as I’m concerned Milan is finished […] —
another good friend less.”35
His interest in Germany was also intensified by internal political changes.
“Willy Brandt is tremendous. It’s fantastic what he has achieved in such
a short time. The CDU should stick that in their pipe and smoke it!”36 He
thought more and more about relocating his studio to Germany. He wrote:
It’s a pity I can’t express myself very well in German, but in a year or two things are
bound to improve. You are lucky to live in a big country; here it gets smaller and
smaller every day. My colleagues here grow a year older with every day that passes,
which makes life here rather boring. As soon as I can manage it, I’m out of here.37

Uecker often visited Verheyen in Antwerp. In 1967, they completed their
joint project, “Vlaamse Landschappen” (Flemish Landscapes), not far from
Ghent.38 They met in Venice where both were exhibiting at the 1970 Biennale.
The two friends planned their meeting and their presentation: “Hey, Jef,
I think this is going to be fun. I’ve been doing some good work. I should like
to show my best work. I think you did the right thing, showing only large
paintings. That way we shall both be strong, as strong as our friendship.
Affectionately, G. Uecker.”39 In one letter, Uecker mentioned that he had
been in contact with the director of the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Gerhard
Storck, and encouraged Verheyen to write to him.40 The following year,
1971, it was Storck who contacted Verheyen because he intended to make
a purchase from the gallery owner Hans Liechti and also wanted discuss a
179

Jef Verheyen holds his Le vide (Empty) up
against the sky in the garden of his house
on Van Schoonbekestraat, Antwerp, 1968.
Photo: Gerald Dauphin, Fotomuseum
Antwerp

1 I am grateful to Dirk
Pörschmann for his generous
support while researching this
article.
2 Author’s conversation with
Günther Uecker, 25 May 2010.
3 Ibid.

In 1967, an extraordinary exhibition took place. It was called “Vlaamse
Landschappen” (Flemish Landscapes).1 There were no works of art on
display in a museum or gallery space. The exhibition venue was the countryside outside Mullem, a little village south of Ghent in Belgium, and the works
on show were specially conceived to include the surrounding landscape.
The artists responsible for the whole concept and the individual works presented were Günther Uecker and Jef Verheyen.
The initial idea for the joint exhibition came from Jef Verheyen. He knew
the owner of a kasteelke, or small castle, in Mullem, who ran a gallery
there. The gallery owner was expecting the artists to come up with a conventional exhibition, and set about clearing the castle rooms to make way
for the show. But his expectations were not fulfilled. The walls of the castle
remained bare and the works created in the landscape were not suitable for
sale — a situation that caused some embarrassment to Verheyen, who had
negotiated the deal.2
The artists themselves also took responsibility for advertising the event,
putting up posters and marking the roads leading to the village with white
paint. At the same time, however, they removed a sign pointing to the
“galerij kasteelke mullem” because they felt the term “gallery”, suggesting
a conventional exhibition site, to be inappropriate.3
The exhibition was divided into six sections. It included a series of whitepainted wooden frames, which the artists placed one behind the other at
increasingly long intervals. Then there were white sheets, either laid out on
the grass or hanging from washing lines, a series of evenly spaced holes
dug in the ground, and several rows of compressed bales of straw sprayed
with whitewash. There was also a group of wooden hay rick stands, as well
as a wooden bridge into which the artists had hammered nails.
185

4 The precise opening date
is shown on the exhibition
posters.
5 Author’s conversation with
Günther Uecker, 25 May 2010.
6 Ibid. Unfortunately, the
artists’ preparations were
destroyed by a storm.
7 Earth Art, Andrew Dickson
White Museum of Art, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York,
1969.
8 Heinz Mack produced the
first plan for the Sahara Project
in 1958. A description of the
revised plan was then published in the third issue of the
magazine ZERO in 1961. Mack
installed the project for the first
time in the Tunisian desert in
1968, cf. Anette Kuhn, “Reservate der Kunst. Zu den Projekten der ZERO-Zeit”, Utopie
und Wirklichkeit im Werk von
Heinz Mack, 119-25.
9 Günther Uecker, “Ein paar
Gegenfragen”, Die Zeit, 19
September 1969.

After Uecker and Verheyen had worked in the open air for about a week,
the exhibition opened at midnight on 23 June 1967 in the presence of
numerous visitors.4 The opening was in the style of a “happening”. Outside
the castle, torches were stuck in the ground, lighting up the night to highly
dramatic effect. According to Uecker, these were an allusion to Verheyen
and his Flemish origins: he was the torchbearer for Flemish art.5 At the same
time, the German words Flamme (flame) and Flame (a Flemish-speaking
Belgian) are very similar — a play on words that Verheyen adopted as his
own. For the opening, Uecker and Verheyen had set up a table in the open
air, laden with regional specialities. The result was reminiscent of a Flemish
still life from the Baroque period.6
One year before the “Earthworks” exhibition was held at the Virginia
Dwan Gallery in New York — regarded as the show that heralded the birth
of Land Art — and two years before the ground-breaking “Earth Art” exhibition in Ithaca,7 Uecker and Verheyen demonstrated how a real landscape
could be used as a means of artistic expression.
While “Vlaamse Landschappen” connected with other works by Günther
Uecker, for Jef Verheyen this open-air exhibition appears at first glance to
have been an unusual event in his artistic career. In the early 1960s, the
ZERO artists Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and Günther Uecker had staged openair happenings and developed ambitious projects involving the world of
nature. For example, the “Sahara-Projekt” (Sahara Project) was envisaged
as a variety of objects placed in the midst of unspoilt nature by Heinz Mack
and other like-minded artists.8 While Mack’s Sahara Project set out to create
intense and vibrant lighting effects — particularly through the introduction
of specially made pieces of art — in “Vlaamse Landschappen” Uecker and
Verheyen’s restrained approach emphasised the characteristics of the
countryside around Mullem.
By the end of the 1960s, more and more artists were finding that conventional exhibition venues had become too narrow, both spatially and conceptually, for their projects. In an article in Die Zeit in 1969, Günther Uecker
wrote that “Nowadays, a museum can only exhibit models and vistas which,
in turn, represent a demand, which itself can only be met in the new dimensions.“9 The same year, he took part in the exhibition and artists’ symposium
“Earth Art”, and devoted an edition of his Uecker-Zeitung to the event. The
186

text of his lecture was printed on the newspaper’s front page: “Earth: here
is a new medium through which to turn our ideas into reality,” he wrote. “In
this space, spiritual emancipation is boundless.”10 Interestingly, in the same
edition he also published photos of the “Vlaamse Landschappen” exhibition.
Although projects using the landscape itself as artistic material appear to
have been atypical of the painter Jef Verheyen, his visual poetry is clearly
recognisable in “Vlaamse Landschappen”. The artist Hermann Goepfert
wrote of Verheyen: “The blue-grey sky of Flanders, the red sun of Flanders,
the yellow landscape of Flanders and the flickering light of the River Schelde.
That is Verheyen, Verheyen the man and Verheyen the artist. Such unity of
landscape, man and artistry is rare.”11 Despite their abstract nature, it is
often possible to detect landscapes within Verheyen’s paintings and many
of his works are named after places, such as Roussillon in France, Venice,
Fiesole and Urbino in Italy and Brazil. In 1967 — the same year as the
exhibition at Mullem — Verheyen painted his own Flemish Landscape,12 a
large landscape-format piece in which everything appears to dissolve into
brightly coloured light. Goepfert placed special emphasis on this ability to
reproduce in paint the real atmosphere and light of a landscape (some of
Verheyen’s paintings are entitled L’air — Air). Verheyen, he wrote:
knows that when the landscape of Kempen is filled with water vapour from the sea,
you find yourself in a new, grey-blue space permeated with pink and gold in which
there are no clearly defined shapes. Verheyen strives to use his materials to fulfil his
dream of producing areas of colourful reality devoid of firmly delineated shapes.13

Verheyen felt deeply rooted in the tradition of Flemish art.14 In 1960,
he founded a group of artists which he named the New Flemish School. In
a manifesto, the members of the group proclaimed that the modern concept
of universality had always been part of the Flemish tradition.15 Building on
the significant achievements of earlier Flemish art, Verheyen attempted to
develop a contemporary style of painting. Among his favourite painters was
Jan van Eyck, whose work Verheyen had studied closely, paying particular
attention to the way in which van Eyck created space through the use of
colour. Van Eyck’s ability to recreate atmospheric intensity is evident in his
Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (c. 1435, Musée du Louvre, Paris). Behind the
central figures is a window divided into three arches, looking out on to a
188

After Verheyen’s death in 1984, Günther Uecker wanted to install a wooden bridge studded with nails in the Open-air Museum for Sculpture, Middelheim (Antwerp) and a frame with a view over the park, in memory of
his friend and the “Vlaamse Landschappen” exhibition.45 The proposal was
turned down by the museum’s committee. For the exhibition at the Langen
Foundation, Uecker has put forward a similar proposition. Rows of bales
of compressed straw and a frame erected outside the museum building will
evoke memories of an exhibition that took place long ago in the Flemish
countryside and to which a Flemish artist made a major contribution.

Where did you first meet Jef Verheyen?
N.V.: It was in Lucio Fontana’s studio. But Jef was also a
good friend of Piero Manzoni, and we always spent a lot
of time together when he was in Milan, going to exhibitions and things like that.
When you met him there, did you also talk about his
work as a painter?
N.V.: He didn’t really like talking about his paintings. He
liked to talk about philosophy, life, all kinds of things, but
he hardly ever spoke about his own paintings.

God) series, even if I still find it difficult to understand the
concept exactly.
N.V.: What Fontana meant was the end of time and
space. He wasn’t thinking of the Christian God. The word
God meant for Fontana cosmos and time. It had nothing
to do with the Catholic faith for him.
AV: For me, it is not just an end, but also the idea of a
beginning. It’s both, and that’s the reason why Fontana
chose the shape of an egg. Which came first, the chicken or
the egg? Fontana put three dimensionality into painting. In
a figurative sense, he opened the egg, so the chicken was
born and with it new energy. In Fontana’s work, what I see
is not so much an act of aggression as the labour of the
midwife. It always takes this brief moment of forceful action,
a thoroughly painful prising open — which shouldn’t be confused with violence — for life to be able to find its way out.

What was the relationship between Verheyen and Fontana?
N.V.: A very close relationship. Fontana told me several
Why couldn’t or wouldn’t he talk openly about his work? times that Jef was like a father to him. I didn’t understand
that at first, since Fontana was 33 years older than Jef. I’ve
N.V.: In my view, it had to do with the way he was.
found an explanation since then. Lucio was not an intelBas-ically, he had two personalities. At work alone in the
studio, i.e. when he was painting, he was a completely dif- lectual type. He hardly ever read, and wasn’t interested in
ferent person. I think that those were the moments in which great philosophy. He was not a thinker but a doer. He had
a well-developed instinct for people and art. He underhe was completely relaxed — happy at being alone, with
his art and his philosophy. When he was drunk, arguments stood quite intuitively what artists were getting at in their
and differences of opinion would blow up out of the blue, work: why they used particular materials, why they might
have made the decisions they made, etc. Lucio didn’t know
and he raved and became violent. With friends — with
Fontana, Manzoni, or me — he was very friendly, attentive very much about the history of art or about philosophy. He
had his own philosophy without knowing anything about
and confiding, because that’s how he was with friends. It
philosophy. Jef was completely different: he was very inwas different with people he didn’t know. He could get
terested in philosophy and in mathematics. In Jef, Fontana
impatient and quarrelsome at the drop of a hat. With his
had found a friend who helped him formulate his instincts
friends, he felt and indeed knew that he was accepted
and understand connections better. So when Fontana said
for what he thought and what he believed in his art. We
Jef was like a father to him, that was certainly because Jef
didn’t have to argue, because we felt our solidarity.
AV: That’s the reason why Gerhard Lenz called Verheyen was a contemplative thinker who could express what Lucio
sensed intuitively. Moreover, Fontana had a difficult relaa Mozart among painters. He had this wild, belligerent
tionship with his sculptor father, Luigi, in whose studio in
and argumentative side. He was very intelligent. Everything he said was intelligent, but you had to go along with Santa Fé, Argentina, he had worked at the beginning of his
career. Their understanding of modern art was totally difhim. When he was painting, he was at one with the cosmos, he felt a link with a higher realm. I think Fontana felt ferent, Lucio received neither approval nor sympathy from
his father. Jef offered him both.
the same. I can see that in his La Fine di Dio (The End of
209

I’m reminded of Fontana’s Manifesto Blanco of 1946,
where he writes about science without getting to the
heart of the matter.
N.V.: Because he didn’t really know anything about science. We could take as an example the collaboration bet­
ween Verheyen and Fontana on Rêve de Möbius (Moebius’s Dream Fig. p. 57). Fontana understood the painting
and knew what it was about, not because he had studied
Moebius’s mathematics but because he sensed, from his
conversations with Jef and of course from his own art,
what the significance of infinity could be in a work of art.

End of conversation. That’s the way Jef was.
In his paintings, Jef was absolutely naked, which made
him inordinately vulnerable. His paintings were very
private for him.
N.V.: I think for him his paintings were like a secret
between him and the cosmos.

So Fontana had found in Verheyen someone who could
give rational answers to his questions?
N.V.: Yes. Jef came at it through the mind and knowledge,
Lucio via the heart and instinct. Fontana also had this
strong attachment to Jef because he sensed he was talented. He valued his art and his intellect, and wanted to
help him get on. Fontana took an interest in young artists;
he was very generous in his support. I remember well how
Fontana would make up his mind about people’s work.
When I thought I’d like a work, he would tell me, time and
again, that I should first look at the man to know whether
the art was good and would suit me. You had to know the
artist first before you could understand whether the work
was right for you. Jef and his art were spot-on for Fontana.
But let’s go back to Jef’s character. I think he couldn’t
talk about his paintings because they were bound up with
his mind and his vulnerable inner self.
AV: His paintings were part of his soul, and he hated when
people would try to touch them. He’d lose his temper and
get furious at the least little damage. He could actually be
scary about this sometimes. He insisted that people wore
gloves to carry his paintings. In general, it is not the artists
but the collectors who are so finicky with the work. It was
different with Jef — he had very strict rules about how his
paintings were to be treated.
N.V.: I remember visiting him in Antwerp, it must have
been 1964. He showed me a lot of his paintings. I asked
him, off the cuff, to tell me about the light in his paintings.
He just looked at me and asked: ‘Do you like my paintings
or not?’ I replied that I did like them, and that was that.

All the ZERO artists travelled a lot at that time, meeting up
to work and exhibit together. What was the need for that?
N.V.: We had the same interests and wanted to swap
ideas, and of course there weren’t then the instant forms of
communication you have today. So we met up. We often
met at the famous Jamaica Bar, around the corner from
the Academy of Art in Milan. It was an important meeting
place for artists and free thinkers. You’d pick up a lot of
news there. The bar was a real forum of information about
contemporary art. We generally met around 6pm. We’d
have an aperitif, go off together to exhibitions, and then
return for a few more drinks before going out on the town.
AV: For the Japanese Gutai artists in Kobe the meeting
point was the small Metamorphosis bar. In Antwerp, artists
used to meet at the café De Muze. Jef was always there.
The exhibition at the Langen Foundation is showing
Verheyen in the context of his friends. What did friendship between artists amount to in the ZERO days?
N.V.: You had friends everywhere in Europe, and we felt
like a large family — Fontana, Jef, Piero, Günther Uecker,
herman de vries, Heinz Mack, Jan Schoonhoven, Kusama,
Christian Megert, Jésus Raphael Soto, Hermann Goepfert,
Otto Piene and lots of others. There was a solid basis to
our friendship, because we were all looking in the same
direction. We were looking at the light. Each of us in our
own particular way of course, but we were all looking
directly at the light. We had that orientation in common.

211

Nanda Vigo (*Milan) is an artist, architect, and designer. She studied
at the Ă&#x2030;cole Polytechnique in Lausanne, opened her first studio in
Milan in 1959; she has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums
across Europe since then. Her work is generally connected with her
â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;chronotopical theoryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. As with all artists of the ZERO movement, the
medium of light is also of key importance in her work. She experiments with aesthetics, particularly with how the use of industrial
materials (glass, mirrors, neon lights, etc.) can have a positive effect
on human sensibilities. Nanda Vigo took part in the Milan Triennale
in 1964, 1983 and 2006, and in the 40th Venice Biennale, in 1982.
She worked closely with architect and designer Gio Ponti and artists
Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana, in whose studio her long-standing
friendship with Jef Verheyen began.

Claire Bataille (1940) and Paul Ibens (1939) studied architecture at
the Van de Velde Institute in Antwerp. They set up an architectural
and interior design practice in there in 1968, and it has been thriving for 42 years. They do interiors for offices, commercial buildings
and private houses. In addition, they design articles that sell widely
in international markets. Most of their architectural work has been in
Belgium, though they have on occasion worked elsewhere in Europe
and in the US. They were both good friends of Jef Verheyen, whom
they met in 1964.

Where did you get to know Jef Verheyen? Where did
the first meeting take place?
I first saw his paintings at the house of his friend and
patron Jos Macken, an important collector of oriental art
who also happened to own quite a few Verheyens. When
I saw Macken’s collection — it was in 1969 or 1970 — I
was absolutely overwhelmed. I loved the paintings from
the first moment I saw them. I asked Macken for the address of the artist, and straight away went to visit Verheyen
in his studio. He only had one work to show me, and I
immediately bought it. I really wanted to own a painting
by Verheyen. His paintings were scarce, as they sold very
well despite the relatively high price. In general, he would
sell out before the exhibition even opened.
But you wanted to know how we became friends.
We worked together for a year at least, and during that
time we got to know each other better and better. We
respected each other, personally and professionally. And
our friendship grew and became stronger from this sense
of affinity.
Do you see Jef Verheyen the person in his paintings?
Not really. He was a special friend, and I was able to
learn a lot from him. He was well read and cultured,
and was always encouraging me to read books, which
he was incessantly recommending. He could be wild, but
also very nice. He had a big heart, had everything, and
was extreme in every respect. His paintings may look light
and simple, but for me, as someone who knew him well,
they are full of depth and timelessness. For years, I had
loved, collected, and dealt in antiquities. And then, all of
a sudden, I felt a great need to live with paintings by Jef
Verheyen. I found something in his paintings that I couldn’t
find in the art that had been my passion till then — space
opening into infinity.

What was the difference between Verheyen in life
and in his art?
Life was a great strain and a tough struggle for him, but
when he painted, he was like an angel, able to apply
himself to painting, to surrender himself entirely to it without a struggle. He felt a relationship with the cosmos. He
talked about that often. I believe that great artists, above
and beyond their egos, are the channels for cosmic messages or energies. My feeling tells me that Jef used this
for his art. When he was able to paint, his ego wasn’t so
pronounced. He sought to get close to the void. But when
he put down his brush, he folded back into his ego and
resumed his personal struggle with life. It was strange.
You could think Jef had two personalities — the being of
his paintings and his own being. I believe in the concept of
Yin and Yang and the link between extremes. His extreme
strength and his wild nature went hand in hand with his
great human warmth and with the fragile aesthetic of his
paintings. He was not a simple man. He was very vulnerable and quick to take offence. And he reacted strongly.
My wife May and I liked him very much, which is why
even today it is still not easy to admit that he was a difficult person. He and his works were a whole; they created
a harmony that bound both sides together.
What was Verheyen’s relationship to collectors and gallery owners like, given that he was so individualistic?
Many gallery owners had great problems with Jef Verheyen,
as he wanted to sell directly to collectors. His attitude was
clear: ‘they’re my paintings. I’d like to know what collection they’re hanging in, and I should be the one making
money from them’. He would get the contact information
of collectors during gallery exhibitions, and then he would
often enough just cut out gallery owners altogether, to
avoid paying them a commission. Naturally, this led
to great problems. That was already very strange, and at
the same time a pity for him, since the aggravation was
a drag on his artistic success. I didn’t mind it myself, since
I learned so much from him, and he was such a close and
valuable friend — you cannot put that in the balance with
money. He was an inspiration to me, like a brother, a father,
and also a teacher. I’m still profiting from his knowledge

ing or intuition. I taught myself photography, and started
doing pinhole camera photography in 1977. It was as
a result of that that I came to understand a lot about the
physics of light. Jef and I wanted to do more work on such
questions as: what is a hole? what is refraction? what is
Fraunhofer’s diffraction? Things like that. Unfortunately, he
died so prematurely. Light does not consist only of waves;
it is also composed of the radiance of material. We still
don’t know what light is, exactly. Jef’s intuition was that of
a painter. He regarded light as a material, and in so doing
he approached our contemporary views about light quite
a bit. Light, as invisible matter, is being, not non-being.
How would you describe Jef Verheyen as a person?
He was a child of World War II, and he had political
views that were often very conservative. We were not
close at this level, as I’m a militant anarchist. We respected
each other, but in things like that I didn’t understand him.
Fortunately, such political ideas had nothing to do with his
aesthetic ideas. In one way, it was paradoxical when he
said: ‘Moi d’abord, les autres après’ (‘Me first, then the
others’), since I don’t know any other artist of his generation who did so much for his colleagues. He was actually
a socialist. He promoted and supported. He was very
generous and thought very collectively. His friends were
precious to him, and he had friends of all ages.
What do you see as the special quality of Jef Verheyen’s
painting?
There is something contradictory in Jef Verheyen. Jef, for
example, often quoted Jean Dubuffet’s statement: “Peindre
n’est pas teindre” (“Painting isn’t colouring”). That’s nice
and alliterative, and suits Dubuffet. Dubuffet worked with
a lot of materials, while Jef painted without you seeing
that it’s painted. His painting is almost intangible, and yet
he talked a lot about matter. With him, there’s this ambivalence between a rather conceptual approach and a
technical approach. He said: “I’m a painter. I’m the son of
a decorator. I paint like a Fleming. I paint beautifully, but
you don’t need to see that it’s painted”. It has to be painted
invisibly or transparently; or, better said, intangibly.
And yet the material is there. It’s like in chip technology.

A circuit can’t be thinner than the size of a molecule.
That’s the physical limit. His dream was to get his technique,
his craft as a painter up to this physical limit. Of course, this
doesn’t mean that material vanishes. It’s there, but barely.
What ideas of perception did Verheyen have as a painter?
Verheyen’s credo in perception was: “Voir, c’est sentir
avec les yeux” (“Seeing is feeling with the eyes”). Like
Monet, Max Bill, myself and many other artists, he had
very poor eyesight. Seeing, the whole question of perception in fact, preoccupied him from the start. He read a lot
Maurice Merleau-Ponty early on, since, as a Fleming,
he naturally had a much stronger relationship with French
philosophy. Incidentally, we’d already read MerleauPonty in school. I talked about it a lot with Jef. “Je ne
peins pas ce que je vois, je peins pour voir” (“I don’t
paint what I see; I paint in order to see”). He liked to say
this, and he said it often, always in French, as if it were an
echo of Bachelard’s dictum: “Voir avec des yeux neufs,
ce serait encore accepter l’esclavage d’un spectacle. Il
est une volonté plus grande: celle de voir avant la vision,
celle d’animer toute l’âme par une volonté de voir” (“To
see with new eyes can still be a slavery to spectacle. There
is something still greater to be wished for: the will to see
before actually seeing, to animate the whole soul through
a will to see”).2
What got Verheyen interested in the idea of
three-dimensionality in painting?
The interchangeability of front and back. Painters are
interested in such perception phenomena in perspective.
The history of painting basically always has to do with
trompe-l’œil.
To conclude, tell me something about the work you want
to do in memory of Jef Verheyen for the exhibition.
We planned a lot of projects together. One of these
projects was a subject he toyed with in many of his works
— diagonals, like an N for example. We developed a
small prototype, and exchanged ideas about it. But then
he died, so suddenly, and we were unable to do it on a
larger scale. What we were interested in at the time was

237

Biography
___
Born 6 July 1932 in Itegem,
Belgium.
1946
Studies painting with Frans Ros
in Lier.
1946 – 1952
Fine Arts education (drawing,
etching, painting, applied arts)
at the Royal Academy of Fine
Arts, Antwerp.
1951
Receives a scholarship from
the municipal borough of Nijlen,
gives the money to his parents,
rents a studio in the Kattestraat in
Antwerp.
Meets Dani Francq at the
Academy, love at first sight. They
attend classes together, and both
enter the Higher Institute for Fine
Arts the following year.
1952 – 1954
Post-graduate studies at Higher
Institute for Fine Arts, Antwerp.
Drawing, ceramics, painting.
Works at the Studio Paul van
Vlasselaer for decorative arts
and scenography (Verheyen
would continue to visit the Studio
until 1956 – 1957).
Engages in academic studies
and explores figuration (landscape, portrait, still-life).
Attends the ceramics studio
of Olivier Strebelle.
Verheyen and Dani Francq
travel extensively and work
abroad. In 1953 they spend
three months in Vallauris (France)
making ceramic pieces — with
Raoul Dauphin, Pablo Picasso

and Fernand Léger — which are
subsequently exhibited. They pick
grapes in Provence, then travel
to Spain.
Second Middelheim Biennial.
Verheyen discovers the work of
Lucio Fontana and Constantin
Brancusi: metal flowers (Fontana)
and marble (Brancusi).
Michel Oukhow, who lives below Verheyen, is the first collector
of his work. Verheyen works for
a short time in the mines, then as
a house painter. He has good
contacts with Paul Bervoets and
Lode Jacobs.
1954
With ceramicists Dani Francq,
Marina Van Acker and Blanca
Olmedo, Jef Verheyen sets up a
studio/shop in Antwerp, opposite
the Rubens House, and calls it:
l’Atelier 14. The official opening
is 21 July 1955 (see also press
1955).
Exhibition in the Gard Sivik,
a private club in Antwerp.
1955
Meets writer Ivo Michiels when
a first article appears in the
press (see the many articles and
texts, including “Jef Verheyen ,
schilder, ook een verhaal” [Jef
Verheyen, painter, also a story],
published on 6 July 1972 in
Bookmultiple Jef Verheyen “40.”
1956
Member of “Het Kahier” in
Antwerp; close association with
Jan Christiaens. Verheyen finds
Theedrinken the finest play ever
written in Dutch.
First black monochromes,
which Verheyen defines as

Schwarz darstellen
(depicting black).
In September 1956 Verheyen
hitch-hikes to Madrid, visiting
Paris and Bordeaux en route.
1957
Meets Jozef Peeters and Gianni
Dova in Antwerp at the openair exhibition (in September)
at the Middelheim (the work
Verheyen shows there, keramisch
wit [Ceramic White, in grog,
height 120cm] is broken, though
covered by insurance).
First white monochromes
(on wood and canvas).
Collaborates with Wim Van Gils
(architect) on a wall painting for
a hospital at Stavelot and installs
fluorescent structures in the tunnel of the press pavilion at the
World’s Fair in Brussels.
Travels to Milan in September
1957; travels to Saint-Paul de
Vence: visits Raoul Dauphin,
whom he introduces to Iris Clert
in Nice.
On the way back, stops in Paris
with Dani Francq. Visits Yves
Klein’s “installation” — the empty
room — at the Iris Clert Gallery
(see letter from Verheyen, end of
1957).
Contact with Roberto Crippa
and Lucio Fontana (exhibition
opening, Galleria Pater).
1958
In February, Verheyen is first in
Basel and then in Milan (letters
from Jef Verheyen to Ivo Michiels
and to Dani Francq mentioning,
among other things, the work
Verheyen sold to Lucio Fontana

243

[20 February 1958], a blue
painting).
Roberto Crippa is in Belgium
for the World’s Fair (April). At
of Verheyen’s and Ivo Michiels’
request, he places a sculpture in
the Belgian pavilion.
In Lausanne, Verheyen’s manifesto, Essentialisme (Essentialism)
is accepted for publication in
art actuel international, issue
1959 – 13.
Having played an active role
in founding the G 58 group in
Antwerp (in the Spring of 1958)
and taken part in its first exhibitions, Verheyen breaks away from
the group after the opening of his
first show at the Hessenhuis.
November 1958: first exhibition at the Hessenhuis. Lucio
Fontana buys L’air est plein de
ta chaleur (The Air is Full of Your
Warmth) shown there and in
Milan, and gives him what
Verheyen describes as a “splendid
black-green painting”. In a letter
(November) from Italy: “I’m leaving G 58”.
Plans a major international
exhibition with Guy Vandenbranden: they invite Piero
Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Yves
Klein, Günther Uecker, Engelbert
Van Anderlecht, Jozef Peeters
and several others to take part.
The exhibition (“Vision in
Motion”, March – May 1959) is
eventually held at the Hessenhuis,
though Verheyen, Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana do not
take part. Verheyen has his first
encounter with Günther Uecker
there (“nailed balls”).
Verheyen meets the writer Guy
Vaes and moves into a larger
studio in his house in Lange
Noordstraat.

Works in Milan, where
he organises exhibitions
with other Belgian artists
(October, November, and
mid-December 1958; see
also Frank Philippi: photo
reportage in Milan).
1958 – 1960
Black paintings, gold,
brown, silver, paintings
with smoke, 1X1 = 1.
travels through the Mediterranean: watercolours,
works in ink.
1959
Is in Milan (1 November to
18 January) working with Frank
Philippi (photo reportage).
In April he returns there and
concludes exchange with Lucio
Fontana (the red painting shown
in the Hessenhuis).
Stays in Albisola Mare with Piero Manzoni (they travel together
from Milan), Lucio Fontana, Pol
Bury, Ivo Michiels and others.
Panarea-series (paintings,
ink drawings). Panarea is
also the title of an essay
on “the single dimension”.
Antwerp: Fifth Middelheim
Biennial. Includes work by Lucio
Fontana, Roberto Crippa and
Olivier Strebelle.
Co-founds the “Nieuwe
Vlaamse School” (New Flemish
School) with Engelbert Van
Anderlecht and Paul De Vree
(see the article by Johan Pas).
Meets Swiss gallery and hotel
owner Hans Liechti in December,
in Grenchen, Switzerland. Liechti
offers Verheyen a contract,

providing very welcome financial
security and the beginning of a
long friendship at the start of the
Sixties. Through Liechti, Verheyen
makes other connections in
Switzerland.
Verheyen rents a studio in
Weert, a village on the River
Scheldt, in a farm called Tempelierenhof which he first shares
with Guy Mees for a short
period. He spends the summer
there, writing and painting.

at the villa of the collector
Louis Bogaerts in Knokke,
on the Belgian coast (see
video with document and
Karel Geirlandt interview,
BRT, 3 December 1962; see
also work with Hermann
Goepfert and Lucio Fontana
in 1963, p. 56).
Contributes work to the
book project Das Weiße
Buch (The White Book),
as do Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Günther Uecker, Otto
Piene, Heinz Mack, Christo,
Walter Leblanc, etc.
Günther Uecker works in
Antwerp.
Verheyen participates in
almost every ZERO exhibition and plays an important
role as the contact person
for the group and the artists
in Belgium (collectors, gallery owners, etc.).

1960
Publication of Pour une peinture
non plastique (Plea for Nonpictorial Painting) (Weert) 1959.
Verheyen and Englebert
Van Anderlecht collaborate
on a series of ten works,
Ni l’un ni l’autre (Neither
One Nor the Other) (26-29
August 1960; see Frank
Philippi’s photo reportage)
Goes to Düsseldorf,
where he stays with
Günther Uecker, and to
Frankfurt, to visit Hermann
Goepfert and Rochus
Kowallek.
1961
Verheyen moves to Charlottelei
and establishes his studio there.
Paul De Vree and Verheyen
collaborate on a project for an
international exhibition in Ghent
to which they invite a number of
ZERO artists.

1962 – 63
Works on several series:
Sunbow Series, Rainbow
Series, Lightbow Series, the
“Four Elements”, Squares,
the “Painting = tests” series.
Paints a number of canvases
on the theme of AB-BC.
1963
The journal De Tafelronde publishes Essentialisme at Paul De
Vree’s suggestion.
Verheyen works with Lucio
Fontana and Hermann
Goepfert in Frankfurt.

1962
Verheyen and Lucio Fontana
collaborate on two works,
a triptych and Rêve de Möbius (Möbius’ Dream, p. 57)

1964
Verheyen makes the film Essentieel (Essential) with Jos Pustjens,

244

Paul De Vree and others (see
flyer for the Berlin and Frankfurt
showings).
Project and plans for a wall
painting for a school in
Frankfurt (p. 126) and for
the international exhibition
in “’t Fortje”.
Venetian paintings in exhibitions in Basel, Solothurn
and Brussels.
1965
Travels extensively as he prepares exhibitions; collaborates
with Hermann Goepfert, Lucio
Fontana, Günther Uecker and
Rotraut.
Exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, Geneva.
1966 – 1967
Initial contacts for a solo exhibition in Mullem.
Paints Lichtkathedralen (Light
Cathedrals); his designs for
sculptures take shape. In chromeplated metal: ruimte / le vide
et le plein (Space / Empty and
Full). The first prototype becomes
a multiple.
Marcel Stal meets Jef Verheyen
and puts him in touch with the
Brussels art scene. This Francophone gallery owner shows
Verheyen’s work on several occasions over the years. The painter
shares the former soldier’s liking
for horse-riding, refinement, and
the pleasures of life.
1967
With Günther Uecker, Verheyen organises the openair exhibition, Vlaamse

We wish to thank the museums,
private collections and photographers for their generous
support in the preparation of the
catalogue and for permitting the
use of third-party artworks. Unless indicated otherwise, works
appearing in the illustrations are
from the archives of the lenders,
the authors, the Verheyen Archive, or the ZERO Foundation.
Despite extensive inquiries, it has
not been possible in every case
to trace the copyright owners.
We apologise for this. Bona fide
claims will be met subject to the
usual arrangements.
Cover image:
Brazilië, 1968, 160 x 160 cm,
Matte paint on canvas,
Vervoordt Foundation
Back-cover image:
Untitled, 1962, Ø 120 cm,
Matte paint on wood fibre board,
Private collection, Belgium
Image first page:
Jef Verheyen painting in his
studio on Lange Noordstraat,
Antwerp, 16 April 1960. Photo:
Frank Philippi, Fotomuseum
Antwerp
Image p. 241
Opening “Vlaamse Landschappen”, 0:00 h, 23 June 1967,
Mullem. Photo: Gerald Dauphin,
Verheyen Archive